Page:Cilappadikaram The Earliest Tamil Epic.pdf/9

Rh ﻿orders forthwith for a military expedition to the North, without waiting to verify, whether the insinuation pertained to him or to the other two Tamil kings, the Chola and the Pandya. An insult to any Tamil king was an insult to the entire Tamil nation and must be avenged by him. He led the expedition, prepared to fight for the glory of his country. In this sense, he was a national hero.

Ilanko's characters speak with variety. There are three dreams, one of Kannaki, another of Kovalan and a third of the Pandyan queen and each has a variety of its own, both in conception and import. There are again two epistles, both sent by Mathavi to Kovalan (Canto VIII and Canto XIII) but each has an individuality of its own. One is couched in a tone of remonstrance, while the other is written in a spirit of repentance, even though the purpose of both the epistles was to re-gain the love of Kovalan. Ilanko's art lay in skilful variation of even repetitive themes. The incident relating to the death of the Pandyan king and queen has to be repeatedly told in different settings but the artful way in which the poet mentions this in Cantos XX (77-81), XXV (11. 95-99), XV (11. 78-86), XXVIII (212-213), XXIX (1. 20) avoids monotony.

The artifice of employing synonyms to take away the tedium is also found in Ilanko. Take, for instance, the use of five different words in five lines to indicate the same object, viz., temple (Canto XIV-11. 7-11: the words are koyil niyamam, nakaram, kottam, and palli). So also, in Canto X-11. 119-140, the words, othai, oli, pani, mankalam, pattu are used to denote a single meaning. Side by side with this, one meets with the employment of the same word, Koyil, five times in five successive lines in Canto V (11. 169-175) but one does not experience any monotony here, because of the otherwise sweet setting in which the word occurs.

Ilanko's style is ornate in places. A uniform clarity is not always aimed at by the poet and some passages are